Lawyers study for years to develop the patience to wade through dense legal tomes on such topics as the “takings clause,” but what about the rest of us?
A coalition of publications at a handful of prestigious law schools is looking out for curious laypersons who might be interested in the debate over intentionalist and textualist interpretations of the law, but don’t have the time to wrestle with a 78-page document brimming with footnotes and legalese. The new online magazine The Legal Workshop offers visitors the chance to browse brief summaries of articles appearing in the influential law reviews (composed by the authors of those articles), written in plain language.
The idea is to open up the content of law reviews to a wider audience and to make legal debates influential and relevant beyond academic cloisters. “As a profession,” Michael Montano, an editor of the Stanford Law Review, told the Web site Legal Blog Watch, “we owe it to the public to produce work that is relevant to society as a whole.” –Steve Kolowich
